Narrated by Soneela Nankani
When I requested A Change of Heart for review, I was hoping for an angsty listen, full of feels. Unfortunately, the book didn’t hit me in the feels at all. The story lacked coherence for me and I found it too OTT to believe. More than anything else however, I was bored.
Nikhil Joshi is a doctor on a cruise ship. He has been working (not well) on board and drinking himself into oblivion every night for the two years since his beloved wife, Dr. Jen Joshi, was murdered in front of him. Jen had been helping the police to investigate a criminal operation, where poor people in India were murdered for their organs which were then sold on the black market. Her investigation resulted in her death. Jen was pregnant at the time of her murder. Nikhil is inconsolable.
Jess Koirala (the listener knows from the beginning this is not her real name) finds Nikhil on board the ship and tells him that she had been the recipient of Jen’s donor heart. She tells him that Jen has been “talking” to her and sent her to find Nikhil in order to uncover “the evidence” which will blow the black market organ ring out of existence. (The men who killed Jen are in jail but they did not reveal who they worked for and the investigation stalled.) The listener knows that Jen is doing no such thing of course – Jess is being blackmailed into helping a nefarious and mysterious figure. Jess was given Jen’s diary and thus knows a lot about Jen and Nikhil and feels as if she knows them both, at least to some degree.
Nikhil is a man of science so he doesn’t really buy that Jen is actually talking to Jess. But he kind of does a little bit – I think this was done because otherwise the plot couldn’t move forward rather than for any convincing reason. Part of me is completely baffled why the mysterious villain (whom I shall call Rich Villain) thought this plan was something which would actually work. It sounds ludicrous. It is ludicrous.
Nikhil has been deeply grief-stricken for two years. He is a drunk when Jess first meets him. But within two weeks, he is a changed man – he stopped drinking cold turkey and promptly falls in love with Jess. I found this incredibly hard to believe. The story needed to take place over a much longer period of time for me to buy it.
Jess has a seven-year-old son at home. It is him who has been threatened (by Rich Villain) and Joy (her son) is why she is doing any of it. (She calls him her “baby” all the time and I found it a bit icky actually. He’s seven. That’s not a baby.) Joy is practically perfect in every way which made me roll my eyes a lot.
There is another villain (whom I shall call Poor Villain) who is a caricature of evil. There is quite a bit of graphic language and description when listeners are in his POV. There was no nuance to him at all. The only thing missing was a twirling moustache.
Jess has a tragic backstory as well. She was violently raped by two men about eight years earlier (you do the math) but even before then she had been a victim of various abuse and assaults. She has an aversion to touch. She has never had consensual sex and she does not know anything about sexual pleasure. She has a deep-seated shame (which she knows intellectually is not deserved) and she feels betrayed by her body which is “beautiful” and incites men to violent lust. I actually did buy Jess’s conflicted feelings about herself. They seemed believable in context. What didn’t work was the idea, that she would be able to enjoy sex with Nikhil a scant two weeks after meeting him.
Jess was also extremely judgemental about Jen’s and (Nikhil’s cousin) Ria’s ambivalent feelings about motherhood. Especially given Jess’s own circumstances, I was gobsmacked she was so preachy about this topic. I wondered (and I don’t know because it’s not my experience) what rape survivors might feel about this. My bet is not good.
Most of the book takes place in about three weeks. There just wasn’t enough time to develop the story such that I could believe that two such tortured people could find their happy ending together. There were other things which, when I thought about them, made no sense but they are too spoilerish to go into here.
There were parts of the story I enjoyed anyway; I liked the descriptions of Nikhil’s family and the cooking and the blessing ceremony and, despite his plot moppet-ness, I did like Joy.
I think this book will work for readers who are looking for a Harlequin Presents type OTT narrative. That’s not really my cup of tea but I know there are plenty of people who love a ripping HP. It’s also possible I was having a particularly heartless week. Some of my best book-recommender friends loved A Change of Heart.
The narration was okay. I would have liked Nikhil and the other male characters to be given deeper voices – for me, there wasn’t quite enough distinction between the male and female cast. I could tell who was speaking, even so. Ms. Nankani slips between an authentic Indian accent and a midwest US accent easily and there was a real benefit to me in hearing the Indian endearments and other Indian words (for food and clothing, etc).
One of the devices the book uses is an excerpt from Jen’s diary as a chapter header. At the end of the diary section, would be “Dr. Jen Joshi”. The way Ms. Nankani said the name was incongruent. It sounded like there should be a “ta da!” at the end of it.
On the other hand, she did deliver the story without overplaying the melodrama, for which I was grateful.
It is hard to say how much of my disaffection with the content bled into my perception of the narration. Perhaps I’d have liked Ms. Nankani’s performance better if I’d been enjoying the story. Consequently, I’ve given her something of the benefit of the doubt in my grade.
Kaetrin
Narration: B-
Book Content: C-
Steam Factor: Glad I had my earbuds in
Violence Rating: All the Trigger Warnings apply. Graphic descriptions of sexual assault and other violence.
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Blackstone Audio
A Change of Heart was provided to AudioGals by Blackstone Audio for a review.
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I’ve heard such great things about this book. I’ve never read anything by this author, but, after reading your review, I’m pretty sure this won’t be where I’ll start.
I liked her first book much better.